Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Waiting for Bankruptcy

By Dave Anderson:


The Rivers Casino is in serious trouble.  The Post-Gazette reported last week that the Pittsburgh casino's holding company's debt has been downgraded again from marginally decent to mostly dead status:



In a report issued Nov. 24, the agency dropped the credit rating of Rivers affiliate Holdings Gaming Borrower two notches, from B minus to CCC amid concerns that the casino may not have the money to meet its debt obligations, including the $7.5 million a year it committed to help pay for the new arena.


This is the second downgrade in the past four months.  The first was at the end of September:




Standard & Poor's downgraded the credit rating for casino affiliate Holdings Gaming Borrower one notch yesterday, from B to B-minus, citing concerns about the Rivers' "weak operating performance" and its ability to meet debt service payments if there's no change in fortunes....


"It's not as if they're just marginally below [expectations]. They're meaningfully below," said Craig Parmelee, who manages Standard & Poor's gaming and lodging team.


Later on in the article, S&P officials say it is typical to see about a third of all casinos go bankrupt in their original ownership configurations. That is the historical rate under normal conditions. However we are not under normal conditions of consumer non-spending. I think it is likely that the Rivers Casino may go bankrupt sometime during the summer of 2010.....


The other portion of the article I enjoyed were the reasons why the Rivers Casino is having trouble. An amazing and unanticipated confluence of events such as three casinos within fifty miles, including two with table games were unanticipated competitors, the Steelers suddenly decided to play football in a stadium that is right across the parking lot from the casino, and suburbanite fear of urban areas were all unanticipated factors that have contributed to weaker than expected performance at the Rivers. Whocodaknown.


I had thought that the revenue per machine per day had stabilized in the range of $160 to $180 range.  I was wrong.  The past three weeks have seen declining revenue.  Revenue during the week before Christmas was back in the same zone as the G-20 week revenue flows.  CCC bond rating is the rating agencies' way of saying a bankruptcy would not be a shocking event.  I may have to give the P-G credit for writing the rumor of a bankruptcy story much earlier than I thought.


If there is a bankruptcy at the Rivers, then the county and the city are SOL as both were counting on casino revenue flows to prop up their general operating budget as well as the large scale regional amenities that no one actually wants to admit to paying taxes for. 



Posted by at
Labels:

1 comment:

  1. Ol'FrothDecember 30, 2009 at 11:14 AM

    I've been saying for a long time that the "gambling will save us" position was silly. People aren't going to come to Pittsburgh in large numbers for vacation (or conventions) with or without the presence of a casino. All it does is churn the local gambling dollars that might go to the Meadows or Wheeling Island instead, and of course, the first thing West Virginia did when PA legalized slots was to institute table games.
    If the Commonwealth goes the table game route (which seems likely) it won't make a difference. For Pittsburghers, Wheeling Island is a destination, a weekend out of town. The North Side isn't.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)